About
One touch of nature connects you to the whole world…
…Whereas our window on the universe is often mislaid in survival living, then sympathetic wooden sculptures remind us through the tree of the larger spheres of life.
Lost in the forest, as a child exploring, small hands, rough, smooth, roots to leaves, marvellous bark.
Cut to the radial life written in rings, grain and texture, knots and whirls of colour, randomly pleasing.
Shaping and turning, exploring the text, these pieces express the presence of this life, its grace and beauty.
We present these pieces as reminders of the rewards of slowing down to a seasonal pace, enjoying time out, and bringing the forest home.
Samvado is based on the Lizard in Cornwall and has been producing sculptures since the 1970s.
Art has no agreed-upon language of form because we always meet the limit of relativity: “That’s just your point of view. We take the right to share or reject art as neurotic or bland, cash and carry. We have eaten relativity, not digested it.”
—Samvado
Osho.
I found Osho as a spiritual master in 1983, and a meditative life arose.
Since that time, have spent four years in several communes dedicated to sharing his vision in Europe and India. Then, more years travelled through West Europe, settling in Scotland many years ago and since 2003 on The Lizard, Cornwall.
For me, creativity arises out of meditation, and art is the expressive play of form with that which is formless. Thus, the highest art form allows oneself to melt into the formless and disappear as someone.
In this view, the ‘form’ of the artist is the fool dancing on the edge of the abyss, just a last game before disappearing, another play at being something, anything, for a while longer. There is no meaning to be sought in such a play; it is more of an invitation to share a dance and take a chance.
Hence, nothing influences my art, the void, emptiness, silence, death, and how to allow such presence amid the myriad forms of life. We tend to choose those forms that cloak and disguise such awareness. Meanwhile, the door of Nature is always open, life and death one inseparable whole, and wood has become a level mirror of my dance.
Ways of working.
If trees must become WOOD, in mere remembrance of their mighty dance, and on their way back to the soil, then STONE too is a solidifying from incandescent fire to lumpen land, all in yearning to be clay and plant food minerals, to become the apple for your lunch. Sculpture interrupts this return process, holding them in form for a while. The materialist who denies the architect of all this is correct; it is so marvellous already that we must already wonder how life has arisen. The very matter has journeyed so far to know itself as conscious.
We must each write our own story, dance, or paint our version of life as we find it.
METAL is different from wood or stone; it is more in the hands of the creator to decide the form. Of course, metal has its material limits and long history of use, but somehow, imagination is more unrestrained. Visiting the foundry at Hayle to see white-hot metal poured into my hollowed mould, the idea’s success hangs entirely on my imagination. However, until taking responsibility for the one I find myself to be, communication is only as my unconscious expresses itself.
In sculptural terms, form exists only because of space. There may be a million possible forms in imagination that never make it into the light. This is the same starting point for self-discovery. To be freshly made every day needs space from all one’s fixed ideas and all the mental furniture from others.
Strangely, the creative process also begins with nothing, with emptying.
Of course, it’s challenging and empty, as if forever is like a dying process, a winter of self. It’s easier to pluck some readymade idea, like a hare, horse, or heroic human; job done. Or choosing to be someone, be someone, anyone, rather than no one for a moment, and risk finding yourself on the other side of conception looking in.
Perhaps the deepest of oneself can’t be chosen but only discovered, and then, who else can you be but yourself? Some aspects are undone easily, and others are a lifetime’s work still ongoing in the twilight.
A sculptural form is a balance of form and space, a communication from the sculptor. A bigger horse means something other than a better idea. Not all ideas are easily grasped. Simple is different from trivial.
Studio
